Justice-as-a-Protocol: Designing a Stateless, Scalable, and Self-Enforcing Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) System for 21st Century India

What the paper is about

Proposes an AI-assisted online dispute resolution architecture for the Indian legal ecosystem, integrating legal rules, multilingual access, digital workflows and automated enforcement.

Abstract

The paper sets out the design and implementation blueprint of an online dispute resolution platform for the Indian legal ecosystem. Rather than a digital copy of a courtroom, it treats dispute resolution as a stateless, scalable and self-enforcing protocol, combining AI assistance, smart contracts, multilingual access and statutory integration. The logic of eight Indian statutes is built into the design, including the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996, the IT Act 2000, the Consumer Protection Act 2019 and the Mediation Act 2023. A layered architecture covers onboarding, mediation, arbitration, award generation, enforcement and judicial export, with attention to compliance under Indian and international law (including the New York Convention). The paper includes worked use cases, a pilot blueprint and econometric impact modelling.

The paper's impact figures (for example, faster resolution) come from modelled projections and case simulations, not from a deployed system, so they are not repeated here.

My contribution

Co-author. Led the system logic and built the frontend for the framework, working on how the legal rules are encoded into the platform's workflow.

Reference

Shinde, S. S., et al. (2025, July). Justice-as-a-Protocol: Designing a Stateless, Scalable, and Self-Enforcing Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) System for 21st Century India. ResearchGate.

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